The present invention relates to optical fiber cables, and more particularly to a method of manufacturing plugs for optical fiber cables.
As shown in FIG. 1, in a conventional optical fiber cable 51 with optical connectors 53, the optical connectors 53 are connected to the ends of the respective coated optical fibers. Even in the case of a multi-fiber type optical fiber cable composed of tape-shaped optical fiber lines, one optical connector is used at most for every five optical fibers. For instance, in the cases of a 600-conductor type optical fiber cable and a 3000-conductor type optical fiber cable, it is necessary to connect 120 optical connectors and 600 optical connectors, respectively. Accordingly, the following difficulties accompany such multi-fiber type optical fiber cables:
(1) If 100 or more optical connectors are connected to the ends of the coated optical fibers of an optical fiber cable, the end of the cable is considerably bulky, which obstructs the installation and transportation thereof.
(2) In the case where optical fiber cables with 600 optical connectors or more are to be installed, the optical connectors are liable to become entangled with one another. Therefore, even if the optical connectors are detachable, the connector coupling work is rather troublesome.
(3) Furthermore, even if the connector coupling work is successfully accomplished, the joints formed by coupling the connectors together are considerably large in size. Therefore, in the case where it is required to lay optical fiber cables in a narrow place such as in a manhole, it is essential to reduce the size of the joints.
(4) A series of operations for connecting about 600 connectors to the optical fibers and polishing the end faces of the connectors requires much time and expense.
Accordingly, in order to decrease the manufacturing cost of a multi-fiber type optical fiber cable with a number of optical connectors, it has been necessary to develop an optical connector of novel structure.